November 14, 2022
Description
This is a 1:2 scale replica of Samus' Arm cannon from the Metroid Prime games. The cannon is made up of several parts to emulate the way it morphs and shifts when selecting different beams.
The light is an RGB LED lamp I gutted and disassembled, the model I bought needed an extra 5 pin cable (used for led strips) to connect the LEDs to the transformer, I have included the housing I used to hold it in place but YMMV depending what electronics you can procure or build yourself. The transformer will be hidden inside her arm, but that piece is yet to be made.
The halves are held together with two M6 x 60mm (or 2 1/2") screws and locking nuts, a similar screw but 50mm long (2") is used for the elbow.
The parts shift using simple wedges pushing and sliding onto other wedges, this system is admittedly far from perfect, and I intent to iterate on it, and perhaps try a new design in the future. The nozzle can be opened up either with by twisting the center splitter or with the individual hinges of each quarter. I used silicon grease to lube every moving part.
This cannon is part of a larger print, which is the remainder of Samus herself (standing 1m tall), those files can be found here https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5934452
"Clear" or "Transparency" pieces should be printed with colorless filament, with few perimeters and little infill for better illumination, if you have dual extrussion you may be able to print the ice and wave transparencies with their green shells on top, but I choose to glue them with liquid silicone. The "glow" pieces should be made with green or yellow "glow in the dark" filament. Everything else can be made in green (silver is also a good alternative), with optional colors for the beam buttons. The elbow_cover should be made with gold colored filament, silk PLA would be great but remeber this figure is gonna be quite large, may want to go with something cheaper or just paint it.
These parts must be duplicated and mirrored in the slicer:
main_side
plasma_transparency
screw_lid
ext_dome_1
ext_dome_2
wave_transparency_1
wave_transparency_2
side_slide
glow_short
glow_long
LED_lampPCB_holder (mirroring not necessary)
These parts must be printed 4 times:
nozzle_slide
nozzle_quarter
Both peg types should be duplicated at least once each. Everything else is printed once.
Model was extracted from Metroid Prime 3 using Metaforce.
Update 1: Reinforced the nozzle_slide to make the assembly less wobbly, the nozzle and nozzle_quarter pieces are modified too as a result.
Update 2: Included new assembly instructions in a PDF file.
Update 3: Added a few grouped parts, and replaced the following pieces with new versions:
main_side
side_slide
ext_dome_1
ext_dome_2
nozzle_quarter
wave_transparency
License:
Creative Commons - Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike